01.13.15

UK Prime Minister David Cameron recently said “In our country [the United Kingdom], do we want to allow a means of communication between people which, even in extremis with a signed warrant from the Home Secretary, that we cannot read? My answer to that question is no we must not.”

There is a fundamental difference between the UK and the US. In the UK cameras are everywhere and people like them because it makes them safer. Guns are banned, and David Cameron is continuing that theme in this quote about things like Apple’s FaceTime and iMessage systems which are encrypted.

A UK citizen recently said: if I have nothing to hide, this system is better.

The U.S. response typically goes something like ‘you have nothing to hide from today’s (benevolent) government. What if you had something to hide from a future government who has begun abusing that power and with whom you disagree.

If privacy and freedom increase risks and danger, is it worth it? Is it a good thing to live in a benevolent police state if it’s safer, crime is reduced, and the majority of people’s freedoms aren’t limited?

12.09.14

How could you have avoided this trend? The headlines based on “n things that x” popularized by Buzzfeed.

I received this e-mail blast from LinkedIn, with the subject line “[My Name], see the top 14 Influencer posts of 2014.” Actually it annoys my when people whom I don’t know presume to use my first name like we’re old college buddies, but, well, ‘Murica.” Here, LinkedIn is supposed to be ever so slightly more professional than Buzzfeed, but they’re getting off on the wrong foot right away with that “top n ‘influencers’” bit.

Each of the following link-bait headlines also includes a byline with a tiny photo of the so-called influencer. You know the individual is an influencer because we see the number of followers each has.

How Successful People Stay Calm

The Biggest Mistakes I See on Resumes, and How to Correct Them

10 Reasons You Have To Quit Your Job

Ten Stupid Rules That Drive Great Employees Away

Job Interview: Why Only 3 Questions Really Matter

The 7 Things Successful People Never Say

8 Qualities That Make Great Bosses Unforgettable

The Small Things You Do That Make You Look Terrible in Meetings

10 Behaviors That Could Kill Your Career

5 Reasons You May Not Want to Work for Google

The Difference Between Successful and Very Successful People

Top performers are absurdly selective. But saying “no” isn’t the only thing that sets them apart

If You Do This, Your Emails Might Be Rude

The 14 influencers apparently have one writing formula between them. To be fair, a minority wavered from the formula far enough to to exclude a number in their headline.

App idea: a browser plug-in that blocks headlines of the top n things style. There, free, make that, and you might make millions, or at least millions happy.

05.13.14

[inspired by Daniel Dennett and considered by several such as Susan Schnieder, but hopefully this version is unique]

After a few thought experiments, the question of where is my mind becomes harder to answer than it might seem at first, and it may not speak well for all the effort placed in trans-humanism and its notions of how to preserve us humans (well, at least our minds) on into the future.

Consider the transport of the Star Trek universe. This nifty device is supposed to somehow take apart our molecules move them to a remote location and then reassemble them. Well, that’s not too much trouble for consciousness. For the dualist it’s easy to think that one’s soul or mind moved along on its ethereal plane or whatever to where the new body is. But even the materialist has little trouble here. After all, I am in this new place and identical in every way to the how I was in the old place. The only weird thing is the disassembly reassembly and where I was in the meantime, but it’s easy to ignore that. Fair enough, right?

Imagine a new inventor in the Star Trek universe comes along and notices that one of the challenges of the transporter is sneaking all those molecules into certain places or over great distances. He knows he could send information faster, easier, and further so, he assembles great jars of goo with every possible molecule you could find in a human at one end of a transporter. He takes the transporter signal and instead of reassembling your exact molecules, he pulls new ones from these jars. One by one every molecule is place in the identical relationship it would be with the original transporter. The dualist is wondering if the new body is really the right one, but the materialist isn’t too worried yet. After all, it’s not like our personalities are contained in the actual impersonal molecules! Surely it’s the organization of those untold billions of molecules that matter and the inventor has assured us that this uses the same technology as the transporters, but instead of the original molecules it uses ones from these jars. Clearly, if the organization is key and then where those molecules came from can’t matter. We are who we are, even though our own molecules are changing over time!

But now we’re running into to trouble. What if another inventor has a look at the latest non-molecular transporter and realizes that the disassembly process isn’t exactly necessary. He could, simply transport you to a room next door, but siphon off the signal for the non-molecular transporter. Or, he implements a scanner that foregoes the need to disassemble at all. When our latest inventor tries out the modification, the result is two of “you.”

Which one is the real “you?” It definitely impossible for anyone else to tell. The new “you” and the one that didn’t move very far really are “you” in every possible way going forward and no one could ask you a question to convince themselves otherwise. Worse, even you can’t tell! The new “you” in the remote location remembers stepping on the transporter pad and finding him or herself in a new location, but memories, sensations, everything is perfectly identical…there’s no way to feel any different.

Except there is a difference in some way. One of you has the same molecules she or he had a minute ago and the other doesn’t. That’s got to count for something, right? Even if we admit we’ve created a perfect duplicate, without error, doesn’t it mean something that one is a copy while the other is the original?

What if the invention worked out so that we were obliged to eliminate one of the duplicates. You’re still around, so it doesn’t matter, or does it? And isn’t this what’s going on in the first revision of the non-molecular transporter (which disassembled to scan? Didn’t we, well, kill that person, or that person’s personality, or consciousness? Consciousness got reassembled somewhere else, sure, but did it some how move there too? Because it’s not sure where to go when we don’t destroy the original. Don’t we all at least intuitively see consciousness as some contiguous flow over time. Because in one case the timeline stopped and in another it doesn’t (even if there is a hiccup).

It seems to me at least, that while we can’t tell from an interview, that a personality ends if we destroy the original. That the me in there is eliminated; ceases to existdies. Sure anyone who chats with the new copy, including the copy and his own introspection, is perfectly happy with the procedure, but the me that didn’t move is gone, that timeline is ended.

If you accept that, well, what happened in the original transporter? Sure the new Spock is happy to have been transported, but how is the transported Spock different than just a copy would be? Didn’t, then, the original cease to exist? And what would it mean to upload my brain into something other than my own molecules or copies of my molecules, but rather a computer as trans-humanists propose? Sure the new computer consciousness is happy about it, but am I not dead anyway?

Is there anyway to move my conscious out of my own head? And how or why is it stuck there? That seems rather odd if the mind really is only the organization of molecules in my body. Don’t we at least have to add over time to that concept? Is locality important here at all.

Your comments, as usual, welcome!
This was posted on Google+ if you wish to find comments on it there.

03.02.14

“Amid signs of Russian military intervention in Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula, Russian generals led their troops to three bases in the region Sunday, demanding Ukrainian forces surrender and hand over their weapons, Vladislav Seleznyov, spokesman for the Crimean Media Center of the Ukrainian Defense Ministry, told CNN.”

In response U.S. Secretary of State, John Kerry said Russia’s actions were “unacceptable” and could bring “serious repercussions”

Seleznyov went on to say “There is no open confrontation between Russian and Ukrainian military forces in Crimea”

Let’s read Selezyov carefully. What do we know from his quote?

We know that Russian generals led troops to the region of the Ukraine which is, itself, pro-Russian.

We know that Ukrainian forces handed over their weapons and that there was likely no violence.

The quote is from a pro-Ukrainian government official.

Is it possible that Kerry and the U.S. are over-reacting?

The Crimean peninsula has long been a pro-Russian enclave in Ukraine. Isn’t it feasible that they have been watching the events in Kiev with trepidation and concern? Is it conceivable that the pro-Russian Crimeans, both seeing an opportunity in the upheaval in Kiev and simultaneously fearing a new nationalistic Ukrainian government would turn to Russians not so far to the north and ask them to come to their aide? That the Ukrainian troops stationed there might not have laid down their weapons in response to Russian demands, but instead welcomed their Russian brothers? What motivation does Seleznyov have to support this view and potentially watch the Crimean peninsula fall away as part of his country?

It remains an invasion if Russian troops are there, even if they turn out to have been invited by pro-Russian Crimean separatists. But we’ll need more reports from both sides of the potential conflict to justify sabre rattling. Let’s not let one sided-media reports blind us to a more complex situation!

02.07.14

Modern scientists make a giant assumption about the nature of the universe while almost never giving it a second thought. Perhaps surprisingly, it’s nearly the same assumption that religious proponents claim is the origin of modern science itself. Apologists (here’s one at random), remind us that modern science was fostered by religious institutions. Modern science and the scientific method that began around the enlightenment is founded on the fundamental premise that the laws of logic and nature are constant and ubiquitous (or nearly so). Scientists make take this for granted, but the devout have a more detailed answer: a perfect God created a perfect, consistent, universe.

During the recent debate between popular science proponent Bill Nye (the science guy) and Ken Ham, the founder of Answers in Genesis.org and the Creation Museum, Ham wanted to have his cake and eat it too. On the one hand, Ham defended the compatibility of science and evolution by noting the achievements scientists and engineers who share his beliefs in young earth creationism. He insisted that understanding the Bible is necessary in understanding the laws of the universe, telling us that the laws of nature are consistent because God created the universe this way as the Bible tells us.

Meanwhile, much of Ham’s debate centered around novel categorization of observational science as opposed to historical science. The exact same observational evidence is available to Nye and Ham. It’s only when we move from what we can actually see to things we can never see, such as the past, that we must use historical science and, he explains we can’t assume it’s always been the same. Here’s an example. Ham refutes plate-tectonics as evidence of an earth older than 6000 years, suggesting that the rate of movement of the plates could change over time. “To assume it’s always been like that in the past, that’s historical science.” Throughout his presentation, Ham readily admits that his source for historical science is the Bible. Nye, he claims, has no where to turn for his justification.

If you’ve never heard of this observational vs. historical distinction before, you shouldn’t be surprised, it’s really only verbal sleight-of-hand. It may sound like a compelling difference between the two methods of inquiry, but suggesting there are two kinds of science isn’t even self-consistent with the rest of Ham’s claims, and “were you there?” certainly isn’t a very effective rebuttal, just because he uses it so often.

Plate tectonics wasn’t the only time Ham used a variation of his “were you there” argument. According to him creation scientists accept radioactivity because we can observe it, but we can’t assume that radio-dating works because the decay rates might not have always been the same. Hmmm. If God created a perfect world with constant laws of nature and the decay rates of strontium and rubidium haven’t changed for as long as we’ve been observing them, why should we think they were different in the past?

We weren’t there to watch sediment collect in ancient lakes and rivers but we can observe (with observational science) how fast it happens today. What reason do we have to think there were different deposition rates in the past? Trees we plant and cut down in our lifetimes build up a new ring for each year of their lives. What reason do we have to think that Swedish trees with 8000 rings spent a part of their lives laying down two, or three rings per year? Ham offered this possibility questioning whether we must “… assume one layer a year…” to explain why these rings falsely date the trees as living longer than God’s creation. We weren’t there, but doesn’t Ham also think that God isn’t changing the rules over time and that there was only one summer per year 6000 years ago just like there is today?

Ham is hoping we won’t notice that he’s both taking credit for the consistency of natural laws; citing them as justification for studying the Bible to become a better scientist, while at the same time rejecting Nye’s dependance on scientific discoveries to date rocks and fossils. We won’t be fooled so easily.

Nye pressed Ham over and over again about predictions. It’s easy enough, as Ham did many times, to suggest that the Bible correctly predicts things we all discover are true after the fact. In Jeremiah 51:15 we read “He made the earth by his power; he founded the world by his wisdom and stretched out the heavens by his understanding.” 6000 years later Ham tells us this vague description is a prediction about the expanding universe. Even if we are impressed by this sort of cherry picking, isn’t science’s track record for predictions dramatically better?

Ham is cooking up yet another controversy where there isn’t one, like macro- vs. micro-evolution, but do we have to rely on the Bible to justify the consistency of natural laws? Why is Nye, and with him virtually every scientist, so convinced that the laws of nature can be trusted to behave in the past as they appear to now? Simple. The assumption is built into every hypothesis and if things work out well, we can accept it until we find a contradiction. A complete hypothesis might go like this: An apple and the earth will fall toward each other as a result of gravity [and they'll do so here, there, yesterday and tomorrow]. It is is tiresome to have to restate that bit in the brackets every single time, but every successful hypothesis is evidence for the bracketed assumption.

Science is just darn effective. The predictive power of science that Nye pressed Ham to compare his creationism against is, in itself, tremendous evidence that this, often unspoken, unconsidered, assumption really is valid. There is no new controversy, no real distinction between observable and historical science. We do make a leap of faith when we make observations about the past without seeing it with our own eyes. The real question is whether we believe that occasional cherry picking or repeated explanatory power is a better justification for that faith.

01.22.14

Are there any media outlets left that haven’t resorted to headlines consisting of lists?

I am not exactly sure how this excuse for a story ever became popular, but it’s driving me crazy. It’s worse than mindless internet memes which attempt to encapsulate deep human lessons with a single phrase and humorous, yet ironic, picture. Frankly, memes are more successful.

A likely explanation for the tendency to create articles composed of numbered paragraphs is that this excuse for writing is easier and journalists, underpaid and overworked as they are, resort to them as a way to get words to paper with shorter and shorter deadlines. I’m not willing to pass the blame on to anonymous journalists in the ‘lame-stream media’, I actually believe in the power of the free-market and clearly, most of us like these things.

I recall a sales training many years ago based on the Myers-Briggs temperament sorter. The point here was to identify and anticipate how your customer communicates and adapt to their style to improve your discussion. One could identify the orderliness of the client by the tidiness of her desk and conclude that simply numbering points in your discussion arbitrarily, that is, just make up the numbers even if the order doesn’t matter, would improve her comprehension. (I’ve tried this, and indeed, it seems to work!)

I just don’t get why it works for so many people? Sure, my desk isn’t all that tidy, so perhaps I am the wrong audience for all these ‘five things you should do with your retirement/lover/holiday meals’ articles but it’s not like I’m the only one with a messy desk. Who is driving all this ‘three things that hotel managers/bloggers/car manufactures aren’t telling’ articles?

Will this be my most popular article ever? Is this the holy grail of click-bait that will allow me to finally monetize my blog? Tell me in the comments section. Just be sure to number your reasons.

01.17.14

After the Boulder flood I learned why basements aren’t included in square footage for houses in most parts of country. Suddenly, my living space dropped to a half of what it had been. Now, technically, this isn’t a problem at all. There’s still more than enough room here, even if food from the pantry is stacked up behind the living room couch. It’s just that I have enough furniture, and things I don’t need, to fit tidily in a house twice as big and now it’s all in boxes pushed into every corner and along every hall in the home.

It’s been over three months but last weekend, replacement carpet was finally installed. After a few more details, I can begin moving everything back downstairs but friends came by to help move a big couch into the basement right away and it’s a pleasant relief. I can find stuff in the garage, and the hallway is twice as wide as it used to be.

This episode reminds me of the old joke. A man, troubled by problems at home asks his rabbi for help. The wise man tells him to get a pet goat. The man is confused how a pet goat is going to help him with his children, wife and money problems, but the rabbi is wise and trustworthy so he follows the instructions. On his way out, the rabbi adds ‘make sure you keep the goat inside your home with you!’ After a week with the goat, the poor man is distraught. Things aren’t better in his home and now his furniture is chewed up, it smells like a farm in his home and his wife and children are angry at all the damage. He returns to the rabbi and tells him that he’s sorry, but the goat isn’t helping. He needs more advice. His rabbi barely looks up from his studying and says ‘now get rid of the goat.’ ‘That’s it?’ the man asks, but he’s happy to bring the goat back where he got it. That very evening his children are happier, his wife gives him a big kiss and the house seems so much roomier.

The flood damaged some furniture and cost a bunch of extra money, but it already seems so much roomier upstairs now!

10.29.13

For a while there was micro-brewed beer. Back in the bad old days when American beer was brewed almost exclusively by a few big industrial breweries a some brave entrepreneurs set out to brew full-flavored beer with hops and malt that you could taste and they started a revolution in American beer. Some of them, like Sam Adams even got really big and the original name for these upstarts, micro-breweries, just didn’t seem to fit any more. Somebody, probably in marketing, decided that there must be a better name to capture the brewers and the full-flavored results and the term craft beer was born.

What do consumers think when they hear “craft beer?” If they’re like me, they want a beer that’s brewed with quality from authentic, honest ingredients. If the brewer wants to make a case why he’s adding rice adjuncts to the beer and cold filtering and whatever else, well, it may end up tasting like an old-school American beer, that is bland and uninteresting, but, well, isn’t it still a craft beer…an honest recipe and intent? It’s not like craft beer has to mean hoppy, or strong, or big, or malty, or flavored, or spiced, or even tasty. Craft beer means something different to consumers as it does to those who brew it. The the brewers it means small brewery, because most of them are and it’s a competitive market where they need all the help they can get. To consumers, it’s most likely meant to distinguish it in flavor and character from bland beers of the American 1970s. Of course, what do you do with a craft beer that tastes like a bland 1970s American lager, or a ‘macro-brewer’ who turns around and makes a great “craft beer?”

As you can read from the link above, “craft beer” has really become a protectionist label used to discourage good beer simply because the brewer has the foolishness to take a paycheck from a big brewery. This is just wrong. Back when Anchor Steam, Sam Adams, Sierra Nevada and Redhook were all but alone fighting against the juggernaut of Mill-coors-weiser, they weren’t just fighting for their survival in the market place, they were fighting for the survival of good beer and all that can mean. If Miller Coors is now helping to support that cause by brewing tasty beer under the name “Blue Moon” instead of Coors, haven’t they actually won that battle?

Beer consumers need a new name to distinguish their desire for a delicious, flavorful beer. And when that name is co-opted by folks who want to use it as a false armor against competition, well, we’ll just have to think of a yet another name. The great news, judging by both the number and variety of full-flavored beers at this year’s Great American Beer Festival, whether they were from traditional craft brewers, or the latest entrants into the category: Coors, and Budweiser, is that we’ve finally won this battle for good beer!

10.02.13

Only three weeks after moving into my home in Boulder, we we’re fighting back the seepage from the Boulder flood in the basement. It’s a little scary, but surely, some wet corners in the room isn’t going to be a problem. Then, water started coming in through a window. That’s a much bigger deal, but still, towels were keeping pace. When the drain in the basement started going the wrong way is when the real trouble started.

The sump pump tried to keep pace with the drains turned into bubbling water features, and it did an admirable job, but they kept flowing the wrong way for nearly 24 hours and when it was over, the floors had been ruined and a bit of furniture as well. Compared to so many neighbors right in the new neighborhood and all across Colorado’s front range, I got off easy.

I got started right away with the clean-up. While water was still coming in I started calling folks to help with the mitigation–I figured I’d have to get in a long line and they’d take a day or two even to come by and make an estimate. My insurance agent called me! and I filed a claim. Then I started ripping the carpet out.

It’s hard work to remove soaking wet carpet, and I really wasn’t sure what I had to do, but it turns out doing it myself saved thousands of dollars, and above all, it allowed the basement to be dried out in a couple of days and the chance of damage or the dreaded mold dropped dramatically. A week later, when the insurance adjuster stopped by he told me that others still had two feet of water in their homes, waiting for him, the home owners say, to ensure he witnesses the damage. Waiting only increased the costs, and don’t forget the smell those folks were living with.

I contacted FIMA while the news of damage others were facing was coming in. Houses just a few doors down were nearly destroyed. Hundreds of people couldn’t get into their homes and water was still flowing over the banks in creeks down the street. The FIMA agent visited and assessed the damage but by this point I already realized how minimal the upheaval in my world would be compared to many. And a few days later a small, but substantial check arrived from FIMA. Enough that I actually felt a little bad about it…do I deserve anything when many are really suffering?

In the end it’s an unplanned, under-insured expense of around $10,000 but the bigger problem seems to be just getting anyone to even provide an estimate for work–they’re all so busy fixing bigger damage elsewhere. For me, it’s just an inconvenience, really; nothing more. But it’s an inconvenience with some serious cost and it feels pretty crazy to be have your heart sink just because it started raining again and the ground is still wet. I bet that’s typical.

06.20.13

I couldn’t understand why she kept insisting it was a choice. And it’s Alan Chambers’ fault.

Turns out, there’s another thing Alan Chambers can add to his sincere list of apologies. Exodus Ministries’ reparative therapy to “pray the gay away” has been such a loud voice for so long, they’re distorted logic even for those who never thought it was anything more than nonsense in the first place. Not only is this idea hurtful and harmful to real people, this nasty notion has warped the debate for both sides so much that we spoke right past each other.

The person I was arguing with kept infuriatingly insisting that homosexuality is a choice. What kind of nonsense was this? It’s the third millennium for heaven’s sake; who, outside of Exodus Ministries even believes this sort of thing any more? (Well, now, not even Exodus does!) Back and forth we went: “when did you choose to be straight?” I interrogated. “They choose to have sex with people of the same gender!” she retorted, “and it’s against God’s law!”

There’s a good chance you’re getting riled up too, hearing the same old argument played out over and over again. What I am here to tell you is that this isn’t the argument you think you’re having. Alan Chambers, the apologetic ex-president of Exodus International, the United State’s largest, probably oldest ex-gay ministries, is happily married. He’s no longer living the lie, for he’s now admitted that he retains same-sex attraction.

With his admission, this brave man has done much to fix a rather absurd argument between gay right’s advocates and Christian fundamentalists. The outcome may not be very satisfying for either side, but it’s a much more honest discussion. What I missed in my frustrating debate was what the choice we’re talking about really was.

Now, let’s be honest, thanks to these abhorrent ex-gay ministries, both sides of this discussion have been mislead. Emboldened by ex-gay propaganda, Christians (and, many other religious groups as well) have insisted that people choose this path of life and they can choose a different path.

Meanwhile, the gay-advocates have trotted out scientific evidence that homosexuality is not some sort of salacious lifestyle that people are attracted to. Instead it’s genetically programmed preference and no amount of prayer or wishful thinking will take it way.

Unfortunately, there absolutely is a choice, it’s just not a fair one. Homosexuals can choose not to have sex. That’s it. No sex for gays. At least not with someone they desire. Ever. Sure, it’s not a choice that even the celibate make with great success. It’s not the kind of choice that many anti-homosexual bigots would be up to the challenge of making themselves (pre-marital sex is against God’s will, but few manage to keep apart before marriage). But sex, if not your preference for whom, is a choice. So much for romance, and even the eHarmony, God’s partner plan. For gay’s, God has deemed they shall have joyless sex if any at all.

The argument that few Christians knew they were making should go something like this: If you believe that God’s love is more important than anything in this world. If you believe that a life free of as much sin you can manage is the only way to honor that love and be by His side for eternity then isn’t giving up sex worth it? Some suffering now vs. a lake of fire forever? Passing on sex in trade for an eternity with your savior? Easy choice!

Gay-advocates rarely considered that this was choice being argued about. I know I didn’t. But, Alan Chambers has been living this life, a gay man as president of an ex-gay ministry, because, he was able to make this choice. And his wife, was willing to make that it with him. You can mock and joke about how many straight sexless marriages there are; that maybe they weren’t giving up too much, but Mr. Chambers could be simply ranking his salvation higher than his sexual gratification. Sure, he was being a hateful bastard for putting this on everyone else, but surely in his pursuit of joyless sex, he’s entitled to his view.

Now that Mr. Chambers is out. Now that he admits how horrible and damaging Exodus International and other such ministries have been, we can finally get past this silly argument about choosing to be gay. Unfortunately, the real discussion is far from over. Many interpret the Bible (or Qu’ran) as warning that having homosexual sex is sinful, Well, being gay doesn’t force you to have sex any more than being straight ensures that every pick-up line will end in bed. It’s the having sex part that’s a choice, not your preferences. If you choose to have sex in accordance with your actual preferences, well, that’d be a sin.

Most of us learned while we were young that sometimes you have to put off instant gratification for greater joy later. The fundamentalist argument against homosexual sex comes down to demanding gays to put off their whole life, just in case they’re right about their interpretation of the Bible and what happens at death. I understand this position better now. It’s a mean spirited prohibition on one of the simplest, yet most meaningful forms of human contact and bonding, but hey, they’re just trying to save an eternal soul. That makes it all better, doesn’t it?